


Letting Go

by TimetravelingArchaeologist



Category: Doctor Who & Related Fandoms, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-03-23
Updated: 2012-03-23
Packaged: 2017-11-02 10:19:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,526
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/367899
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TimetravelingArchaeologist/pseuds/TimetravelingArchaeologist
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She stopped keeping track of the days inside the library's core after the number climbed past 500. At least she thought that it had been that long. River never did ask CAL if the days inside matched the number of days outside as well. For all she knew time no longer applied. It didn't matter anyway, each number she counted was nothing but a reminder that she would never see him again. Her Doctor, her lover, her husband, her everything.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Letting Go

**Author's Note:**

> All mistakes are 100% mine. This hasn't been beta read but I'm impatient and just wanted to post. Forgive any errors please.
> 
> I hope you enjoy and will review if you did (or didn't)

_When you run with the Doctor, it feels like it'll never end. But however hard you try you can't run forever. Everybody knows that everybody dies and nobody knows it like the Doctor. But I do think that all the skies of all the worlds might just turn dark if he ever, for one moment, accepts it._

_Everybody knows that everybody dies. But not every day. Not today. Some days are special. Some days are so, so blessed. Some days, nobody dies at all. Now and then, Every once in a very long while, every day in a million days, when the wind stands fair and the Doctor comes to call, everybody lives._

_River Song – Forest Of The Dead_  
\----------

She stopped keeping track of the days inside the library's core after the number climbed past 500. At least she thought that it had been that long. River never did ask CAL if the days inside matched the number of days outside as well. For all she knew time no longer applied. It didn't matter anyway, each number she counted was nothing but a reminder that she would never see him again. Her Doctor, her lover, her husband, her everything.

She wonder's about the younger him, if his face has changed into the man she loves yet. If he's met her parents, if he's seen her again, kissed her again. It hurts to think about any of it knowing it's all in her past. Some days for a very brief moment she thinks that she wants to forget, but that would be so much worse and so instead she builds a world to remember it all. After all, she has all of human history to draw from.

CAL creates for her, the street her parents lived on. The unremarkable row of houses with her parent's blue door situated in the middle and her father's car parked outside. The little patio set, and the park across the street. The cat that slinks across the lawn at night, and the fragrant garden of the elderly lady who's name she can never remember. It's all here, from the crack in the pavement that always makes her mother grimace, to the slightly bent gate three houses down. All of it, all of it and none of it.

The people come later. She'd started off with the recreations of the team she had arrived with but she had watched them all die and every time she saw their faces she blamed herself and so she had had CAL remove them from her world. She filled her world with faces she did not know and would not feel guilty for. It wasn't enough. Eventually she creates Amy and Rory, their parents, friends, coworkers, jobs, everything. As much as she could remember or fill in or pretend was real.

Eventually she slips into the world as if it wasn't false at all. On Friday nights she drinks wine with her mother while her father works late at the hospital. She strolls in the park with the dog one weekend when they 'take a holiday' and collects the mail. Nothing feels right, but she can't bring herself to do it quite yet. Afraid if she does she'll forget her past, their past. Afraid that maybe if she does it will mean that she's not real any more. If she's even real now.

River doesn't realize that things are now filling themselves in until one day a soft noise drifts on the breeze and causes her to look up sharply. With her gaze torn away from her book she scans the landscape before her before her eyes settle on a familiar blue box. Her book suddenly finds itself tossed to the side as she races from her sitting place towards the Tardis to throw open the doors.

All she finds inside is a small room filled with a stool, table, brushes and dusters, fire extinguisher and a torch. As if it were waiting for an officer to take his meal break or for a report to be filled out on the table at any second. She closes the doors and returns to her book. She's not ready yet, can't do this or even acknowledge what it might mean. Any of it.

Eventually her eyes slip closed and when she opens them again she's no longer sure what's wrong but something feels missing. Shaking the feeling off she goes back to living her life here until one day when she can no longer understand why something should be missing at all.

Time may or may not be passing, but it is flowing in an orderly sort of way here in this place. She celebrates holidays and birthdays, enjoys the changing of the seasons. And when Amy pleads with her they take vacations and travel the globe. They never leave the 'Earth'. She can't yet and her mother never asks, River still controls this world. A blessing and a curse in every way.

\----------

One day River dreams up her Vortex Manipulator. It's just laying on the dressing table, she leaves it there waiting. Eventually other things follow, her favorite dress with the long zipper, the red heels she bought in London with the real Amy once, a pair of deadly earrings. Her blaster is the last to join the contents of her room. She locks the weapon and earrings away but leaves the dress at the front of her closet, it reminds her of so many things.

Time passes and boredom sets in, but River is in a library far into the future. She can go anywhere and explore anything. She is not limited to what she can discover, every major and every minor archeological find in all of history is at her fingertips. It doesn't take long for her to decide to do it. She straps the leather device onto her arm and before she knows it she is there, digging up shards of civilizations long gone.

A thousand and one adventures pass by but it's not the same. It's never the same without him. She returns home and walks the seven blocks to the closest library branch. It will be easy enough, it contains every book in the universe. She smiles at the thought that it is 'bigger on the inside'.

She tears her way through the history of everything and everyone looking for traces of him throughout the galaxy. The activity is like an old friend. She finds legends and stories of him and his travels. Some speak of companions, others do not. She devours each new find and from the detailed information here she can visit the places he had once been.

\----------

When she realizes that if she's not ready now she never will be, she takes a trip to her last happy memory. She's in the bottle green dress again, the one she knows is his favorite, and taking a running leap she flies off the edge of the tower plummeting downward. For anyone else this would be death, suicide. For River it is as natural as breathing and she closes her eyes enjoying the thrill before she lands neatly in her husbands arms.

“Honey I'm home,” his words a whisper against her ear. She closes her eyes and clutches him tighter asking. “And what sort of time do you call this?”  
They lean away from each other and share a smile before The Doctor speaks again.  
“Oh my River Song, fancy a run?” His fingertip tapping against her nose as he steps back to pilot the ship.  
“Do I get to drive?” Her smile now a full blown grin.  
“Since when do you ask?” His amusement painted vibrantly across his face.

When they land he leaves the breaks on and she wonders if he isn't real after all. And later it doesn't matter because she's in his arms once more.

\----------

_Everybody knows that everybody dies. But not every day. Not today. Some days are special. Some days are so, so blessed. Some days, nobody dies at all. Now and then, Every once in a very long while, every day in a million days, when the wind stands fair and the Doctor comes to call, everybody lives._

_  
_

River closes the book, tucking each of the three children in with all of her love before bidding them sweet dreams and switching off the lights before closing the door.

She'd suddenly startled by a pair of arms wrapping themselves around her before she relaxes, leaning into the Doctor's arms.  
“They finally have fallen asleep. Fancy an adventure?”  
He presses a kiss against her hair and turns her to face him.  
“This is the adventure River. The beautifully impossibly perfect adventure.”

It's this moment that River realizes that he is right and that nothing could ever be more real for her than this life. So she lets go of the possibility that there is anything else but this world. River lets go of it all and embraces her impossible man, embraces everything they have together.

And deep within the library CAL is the only one who ever knows for sure just how many have been saved.


End file.
